Conventional staplers have a compression or tension spring to push the staples forward. The basic construction with, for example, a stapler using a compression spring is a follows:
As shown in FIG. 14, there is a guide rod (2) within a frame (1), with a compression coil-spring (3) provided around the guide rod. This spring pushes the staple pushing member (4), which pushes the staples (5) forward.
However, with this type of construction, a certain amount of space (6) must be provided in the frame (1) to house the fully compressed spring (L), resulting in a relatively long frame.
As an example of means to realize a more compact stapler, a type of stapler that has a magnet (7) instead of a coil spring to pull the staples forward was developed as shown in FIG. 15. With this type of stapler, space must be provided to house the magnet, but this was much less than the amount of empty space required for the spring, and enabled a considerable reduction in size.
However, the major problem with this type of stapler was that the staple stays inside the stapler (the magnet keeps it from going out) when accidentally pressed down without stapling through anything, which was quite difficult to remove.